Good day!

Regular readers know that for years I have been encouraging still photographers to try video on their DSLR and Mirrorless cameras. For the vast majority, these cameras are all that anyone could need for video pursuits and the manufacturers have invested a ton of money into the video aspects of these cameras. The results to now?

Crickets…

With a couple of very rare exceptions, the uptake overall has been negligible. Recent surveys of DSLR and Mirrorless owners to ask how often they do video had the highest response levels for the choice of NEVER.

Yikes

So I decided some weeks ago, to give up challenging still photographers to do video with their “good” cameras. It’s that Einstein definition of insanity thing. If you do not follow me, look it up.

Instead, I challenged the members of the local camera club that I host to pull out their smartphones at the last meeting. Everyone had one. I told them to start the camera app and put it into video mode. No one had any issues doing that. Then I told them to make a 5 seond or so clip of the person nearest waving at them. No concerns for lighting, settings, audio, just point and shoot.

Every single person was successful. Many said that they had never tried it and when queried all present said it was really easy. So I made it assignment for the next meeting. Each member was asked to create a short clip of 5-6 seconds of anything that moved and send it in and I would show one from every member who submitted at the meeting.

Not every member engages in the assignments. That’s ok. In this club there is no pressure, there are no contests (because art is not a competition), and there is no negative outcome if someone chooses not to play. We have a couple of weeks to go before the next meeting as I write this and while some members have already submitted, and one of the members has embraced his full Spielberg, I expect most submissions to arrive just before the meeting, which is how it works all the time. We will see how many members arise to this very simple assignment.

The point of the exercise should not be lost on still photographers. The smartphone is the camera that is always with you. You can shoot excellent looking video without buying anything else. You don’t need gimbals or stabilizers or add-on lenses or video lights to do simple video with your smartphone. You don’t have to understand frame rates, shutter angles or gain. It literally is point and shoot. Whether the subject is children, pets, waves on the lake, bicyclists, joggers, dog walkers, cars going by, skaters, skateboarders it doesn’t matter. Video excels for subjects in motion. If your child or grandchild plays a sport instead of going into full burst mode on your regular camera, shoot a clip on your smartphone. You will get the point of greatest action easily. And since most smartphones shoot in 4K you can grab a still from the sequence if you want that is going to be 8MP in pixel density.

Since we have all seen really big prints from cameras using 4MP and 6MP cameras that did not benefit from any computational photography tools that looked great, even for those few who do make prints, the framegrab is going to look great as a print. So quality is not an issue.

If you’ve ever used your regular camera in high speed burst, you could be even better served with a video. Even if your camera does 20 frames per second in burst mode, you will have more options in a 30 frame per second clip. As most videos and images are viewed on smartphones, tablets and your computer, you already know that they will look great. 4K video from your smartphone looks terrific on your 4K TV.

That’s enough for now. I dare you to do this experiment yourself and discover at your own pace that smartphone video is the easiest way to make video clips and that they look really good. Also most smartphones have some kind of simple to powerful video editor right there. I have no Android experience specifically but if you have an Apple device, iMovie, which has no cost to you, is an incredible video tool. You can not only trim clips but you can use the Magic Movie function to select your clips and playback order, add titles and even add free to use music, without ever downloading anything to your computer.

Again, I dare you to try this yourself. Until next time, peace.